


Empty Bedroom Walls

by ryssabeth



Series: Stories Upon Bedroom Walls [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, University Students
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryssabeth/pseuds/ryssabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At least this year he has a goal in mind--but it'll be a wonder if he manages to finish it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Bedroom Walls

The walls of Grantaire’s bedroom are white. His old flat didn’t have that problem—the walls had been a sickly yellow colour with abhorrent pink-purple trim. But it had given it character, despite all the complaints from his friends.

But this one is distinctly lacking in the character department. The hallway is a soft blue, the kitchen a darker blue, the living room a mixture of tan and cream—and yet the bedroom is white.

How mundane.

(It’s lucky, then, that Grantaire fancies himself to be an artist.)

He places a bottle of beer on the end table, brings his paints into the bedroom, and considers that this might be an all right way to spend the last night before the start of the term. Of course, things like painting take planning and forethought and he knows he can’t get to the painting in one night. But _this_ term, at the very least, he’ll have a focal point. A personal project.

Or something to that effect.

One beer bottle on the end table becomes two, which becomes three, which somehow turns into five as he pencils in lines and small designations on the white paint, designing something that is an idea in the making. It could be something glorious, he thinks, maybe.

(But, knowing him, it’s incredibly unlikely that it will amount to anything at all.)

He grabs a bottle of water before bed (because Courfeyrac made him _promise_ he would start up with that), turning off lights behind him, falling onto the bed—as is customary—and dropping into sleep without even managing to open the water bottle in his hand.

-

To be fair to him and his here-uncatalogued flaws, he always goes to his classes on the first day of term. It’s courtesy—to himself, he supposes ( _might as well see what’s occurring before I decide not to go_ ), and to his friends. They would probably die without his company.

(Don’t quote that. It’s unquantifiable.)

“Combeferre said you wouldn’t show,” Jehan murmurs, scribbling poetry rather than paying any attention to the _Knowledge & Belief_ syllabus. (Grantaire can completely relate. Ah, the woes of philosophy in general.) “He and Enjolras owe us fifteen Euros apiece. _Very_ nice, Grantaire, we’re so proud of you.”

“Warms my heart,” he says, but it doesn’t. “Is Joly still stressing about his medical prep exams?”

“Ah so _that’s_ why you didn’t call over break. No one wants to deal with Joly when he’s _stressed_. But yes, and he thinks he’s getting stomach ulcers. Which, he says, aren’t linked to stress, but can increase it. Who knew?” A passing glance at Jehan’s poetry reveals it to be about hypochondriacs (and let it never be said that Jehan can’t come up with things on the fly). “I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I. Well, that’s my learning quota of the day, so I suppose I’m free to go home.”

Jehan smiles—but Grantaire doesn’t leave. Because first classes of the term.

He attends those.

No exceptions.

-

 _Which_ is really unfortunate, because by the time lunch rolls around—and _lunch_ is really an arbitrary term ( _but all words are arbitrary and have really vague definitions!_ His brain says, the part that enjoys to dissent with philosophy), because it only really defines the time that _everyone_ has a free moment in the day to eat together—Grantaire is ready to be done with the education system entirely.

(His hands are already starting to shake and his head is pounding—but not in the good way, not like after a good night of drinking.)

But first day of term. No exceptions.

( _Fuck that rule who made that rule._ )

“I _told_ you,” Courfeyrac cuts into his headache, splitting his head down the middle and, yes, there it goes, he can feel brain-matter leaking out of his ears. “Fifteen, _fifteen_ , please and thank you.”

The lot of them get paid by both Enjolras (who doesn’t look up from his book— _oh please, really, that title_ ) and Combeferre (who at _least_ has the decency to look ashamed for his lack of faith— _but I wouldn’t have faith in me either_ ). Grantaire, to his credit, gets five Euros from each man (and Eponine) and is not, in the least, surprised with himself when he calculates how much booze he can buy and still have money left to eat on.

Calculations keep him from thinking of Enjolras.

Calcuations keep him from saying something stupid.

“I’m actually working on something this year, you faithless heathens.”

Or it doesn’t. He takes it back, he still says stupid things. At least when he’s drunk he has an excuse.

“That’s _rich_ coming from you,” and _that_ is all Enjolras is going to say to him. (After last term that’s _it_? All right, fine, _fine_.)

He purses his lips, holding up his hands for the story, receiving the attention of everyone except the one he pines for. Irony! Or coincidence. Or the slighting hand of Fate. (That one is unlikely.) “It’s a mural—or something. I’m painting the walls of my bedroom.”

“You’re finally getting rid of that yellow monstrosity?” Marius laughs. Even Enjolras looks impressed.

“Uhm,” he half-smiles because, “not exactly. I moved.” (It’s a long story, has a lot to do with drinking and self-pity and not very much at all to do with the decorating.) “My new place has white walls and it’s so boring. So I thought I’d decorate them with something. Just not sure what yet.”

“Will you Instagram it when you’re done?” Jehan asks, currently in the process of posting his own poetry to a place where people can _appreciate the art ahead of its time_ (his words, not theirs, mind you).

Grantaire answers that is incredibly unlikely.

Enjolras says it’s incredibly unlikely that he’ll even finish.

And _that_ , dear friends, is just completely out of line.

“You know, I could just make a mockery of every political hero on my wall and just go to bed every night thinking of how angry it would make you, Enjolras.”

It does not bear thinking about that he wholeheartedly means that he will _go to bed thinking about him_. It also does not bear repeating, because Courfeyrac’s lips press into a thin line, like he understands, and for all Grantaire knows, he could.

He’s never prided himself on subtlety.

The silence that settles is tense and if Grantaire had a bottle he could untense it, he’s sure—and with that thought the tremors return and his head starts to thrum with the lack of his last drink once more.

“Don’t you have a class that starts now?” Joly says quietly, poking at the remains of his sandwich (organic, the healthiest thing on this planet).

Grantaire is up, out of the chair, and out of the dining hall with a breathless curse of _shit_.

No exceptions.

-

There is something extracurricular, however, that he doesn’t _need_ to go to (and that’s something he tells himself _every single day_ ) but attends anyway. Since break had paused the little meets of “Le Amis” (much, _much_ to Enjolras’ chagrin and much to the happiness of Grantaire himself) there are probably a great many things to catch up on, most of which he will not pay any mind to.

He’s only here has an irritant in the eyeball of revolutionary idealism (feel free to add air quotes, because that was most certainly intended).

So his friends talk—talk of the unfair rise in tuition ( _“the school is publicly funded!”_ ), of the subtle discrimination of non-heterosexuals, bans on peaceful protests on campus (which isn’t so much a government issue, but this start out small, Enjolras says, and everyone listens to him).

Grantaire, instead, sketches (and a beer bottle rests at his elbow, waiting). A notebook—probably for a class he never managed to attend after the first day—full of blank pages waiting for decoration. He lines out hands and fingernails, eyes and noses, regal eyebrows and cheekbones and a strong chin.

Curls drape across a barely-drawn forehead, and the lines are thickened and emphasised.

And it is only when the side of his hand is dark with pencil, and the plans of printing off protest paraphernalia cut into his thoughts, that he realises his hands have betrayed him. It’s okay, of course. Most things betray him eventually.

(Enjolras stares up at him, an eyebrow arched dismissively, waiting for shading and the smear of his thumb to define the slope of his neck.)

He shuts the notebook with a rustle of paper, grabs the beer by the neck of the bottle, and gathers his things to him. He’s sure he’ll have plenty of time this year to ignore everything and anything that goes on in this club.

“Where are you off to?” Marius asks, looking away from the whiteboard where assignments are being laid out for flyers and pamphlets of all kinds.

“I’ve got a project to start,” he says. “I told you.”

Enjolras pays him no mind—or, rather, he looks up, arches a brow ( _ah so that’s where that image came from_ )—and goes back to planning the future of France.

( _I could say something about his inflated ego._ )

Grantaire heads for the stairs, pausing with his hand on the railing, before he realises he’s neglected his most important duty.

With a wave and a smile tossed over his shoulder, he flutters his fingers and is sure to say, “also, before I forget, this is a foolish enterprise, a waste of your time, and I’m sure there’s something else I could say about your confused morals, but I just don’t have the time.” (The notebook is heavy under his arm.) “See you tomorrow!”

“You really don’t need to bother!” Enjolras tells his back as he jogs down the stairs, two at once and then leaping the final four, and Grantaire takes that in stride.

He’ll be there tomorrow, most likely. After all, it is his job to be an irritant.

He’s really rather adept at that.

-

He drops newly-purchased alcohol onto his kitchen table (along with his things and the notebook), taking the beer from the meeting with him to his room—he’ll be back, in moments, really—and the bottle shakes in his hands. At least until he works his throat around the liquid, and chugs half the bottle. It doesn’t burn—not like whiskey or absinthe or anything that really warms him up—but it does the job it needs to.

The paints are where he’d left them, the pencil on the end table near a sponge, which he takes and wets in the small bathroom.

Large strokes against the pencil lines wipe them off the wall, the pencil coming along afterward to sweep toward the ceiling where his new idea has taken him.

By the time the Irish whiskey rests on the floor hear his ankles, Grantaire has started the brushstrokes, black lines rising up away from the floor.

At least in this, eyes don’t crop up under his hands, nor do curls or lips or cheekbones. Only lines.

(To be fair, however, even if a face did appear beneath his brush, he wouldn’t have been able to see straight enough to notice.

But at least the tremors are completely gone now.)


End file.
